Michael John Grist » Ghost Towns

Ruins of The Secret World

MJG — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 02:03:31 +0000

There is a city on the moon. 11 days are missing. The Earth is hollow. The tower of Babel never fell. These are just a few of the many premises of The Secret World, a stunning new MMORPG game that...

The aftermath of Oradour’s War

MJG — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:47:32 +0000

Oradour-sur-Glane is a village in west-central France. The original village was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built after the war...

Dunes envelop the Namibian toytown of Kolmanskop

MJG — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:23:50 +0000

One day a giant went to play in the Namibian desert. He made a toytown village out of bits of things he found lying around; the husks of scorpion shells, desiccated bones, sand-sifted diamonds, and brightly colored plaster. He lined...

Top 5 Japanese Ghost Towns

MJG — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:50:32 +0000

Common wisdom about Japan says it’s a tiny island with a serious premium on space, leading to real estate prices in the cities higher even than the most exclusive blocks of Manhattan. The thought that there might be whole abandoned...

The 1937 Chevy at Bodie ghost town

MJG — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:03:56 +0000

The ash-flooded town of Chantai

MJG — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:28:37 +0000

The town of Chantai in Chile was buried by volcanic ash and muddy lava in May 2008, when the Chaitén volcano erupted for the first time in more than 9,000 years. The eruption threw up a plume of ash and...

Gunkanjima Opens

MJG — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:45:17 +0000

Gunkanjima opens to the public! The famed ‘Battleship Island’, properly Hashima island- formerly a haikyo Holy Grail, has now been opened to tourists to ‘explore’ along a specially built walkway. The cost of the trip is 4,000yen, including the ferry...

Memories of Nichitsu 4. The Dr.’s brain in a jar

MJG — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:27:22 +0000

Nichitsu is a tiny little village huddled in a chilly mountain pass, far from the nearest population center. Come an emergency the Doctor’s office would have been the only ER, so its few rooms were crammed full of equipment, now...

Nichitsu 3. A fire truck in the ghost town

MJG — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:49:00 +0000

Nichitsu Ghost Town stretches for around a kilometer, from the semi-functioning mine shacks at the mouth of the last tunnel, up past the Junior High School, the heavily dilapidated wooden apartments, and buildings stacked off the steep hillside on concrete...

Nichitsu 2. Elementary school in a Ghost Town

MJG — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:33:48 +0000

At the dead-end of a blast-hewn road snaking up through the mountains north of Tokyo, imprisoned by sheer moss-rocked walls looming overhead like rotting Gothic colonnades, the Nichitsu mine ghost town lies in wait, wreathed in a low mist and...